Wolf's Lair

Our other headlines, protests have begun across France as authorities attempt to prevent a repeat of last weekend's looting and violence.

And German officials say fires all but destroyed an Alpine retreat known as the Wolf's Lair, used by Adolf Hitler during the Second World War.

This is NewsHour from the BBC World Service with me, Sean Lay.

In the United States, the botched execution by lethal injection of Krista Pike, who killed a classmate, and the firing squad facing Nidal Hassan, who killed 13 of his fellow soldiers, have renewed the debate over the death penalty.

I need to get rid of Himmler as well.

So a few days later, Hitler is now in his Polish bunker in the Eastern Front, nicknamed the Wolf's Lair.

And von Stauffenberg tries again.

But again, there are too many important Nazis missing.

So he walks into the room and you have 24 of the most high-ranking Nazi generals, officers and Adolf Hitler standing over a table looking at notes and maps and stuff like that.

Bear in mind, by the way, neither Himmler or Goering are...

in the wolf's lair at all so at this point they've just thought the the the allied invasion of d-day is on the way there they're pushing hard we just got to go for this fuck the rest we just need to kill hitler any other generals that we get we need to get them that's it let's just go for it also the other thing is it's risky the more and more you do this the more chance someone finds you

you know

If he had died in 1930, would there have been World War II and would there have been a, a Holocaust? And then, then the, the other famous almost was that in 1944, next to last year of the war, Count Claus von Stauffenberg, a German army officer who became disillusioned, um, attempted to kill Hitler.

He, um, he brought a, um, a, a small suitcase with, with a bomb into the c-conference room at Wolf's Lair.

He sat down next to Hitler, put the suitcase, which he had, he had primed the bomb.

He put the suitcase just under Hitler's foot, and the bomb went off.

He proved intolerant of dissent, dismissing subordinates who dared to criticize his conduct or urge a secession of assaults.

October the sixth, Hitler delivered his judgment from his Wolf's Lair, where he spent the majority of his time during this period.

His decision would seal the fate of millions.

The complete occupation of Stalingrad, he proclaimed, was the most important task facing Army Group B.

And as his power grew, this personal obsession morphed into state policy.

He named his secretarial military headquarters across Europe after the animal, the Wolfsschanze.

Sorry for my, for my German.

Or the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia, and the Werwolf compound in Ukraine.

the Wolf's Lair, Hitler's infamous headquarters during the Second World War.

From here, the dictator and his entourage command the war against the Soviet Union.

A campaign of destruction of an unprecedented scale, the bunkers in the Masurian forests rise high up like giant tombs of long-forgotten pharaohs.

former Soviet Union with the special train America, and he lived here until the 20th of November, 1944.

What makes this historic ground so interesting for visitors from all over the world today? Is it just the fascination with evil? So that is where he had walked to, a real close-up view of the sinister.

Or is it the search for an authentic place that makes all that had happened comprehensible? The Wolf's Lair is a place of European faithfulness.

From here, a war of extermination is controlled.

Inhuman propaganda is devised and the extermination of the European Jews is being enforced.

It is evident from snippets of information like this that Paulus had serious doubts about Hitler's overall capacity to lead the German war effort.

At a meeting with Hitler at the Wolf's Lair headquarters in Prussia on the 6th of August 1941, Paulus subtly raised some of his reservations to little effect.

Instead, he and Guderian, whose tank divisions were now working closely with the 6th Army on the Eastern Front, expressed concern that they were being ordered into Ukraine to seize Kyiv.

Paulus and Guderian contended that Moscow was surely the priority, and a diversion of a significant proportion of the Wehrmacht southwards to Kyiv would make it impossible to secure Moscow before the winter set in.

It has the additional benefit of continuing the narrative through to 1948 and the years after they were captured by the Russians in 1943, though as an effort at an exculpatory account, it must be handled with some level of caution.

These caveats aside, Adam's memoir provides a valuable insight into where Paulus was psychologically as the Battle of Stalingrad turned in the Soviets' favor with Operation Uranus in late November 1942.

Adam recounted how Paulus's initial response once the severity of the situation became clear was to send a request to the Wolf's Lair in Prussia to be allowed to break out of the encirclement to the southwest.

Hitler refused this request, and Paulus resigned himself to following his orders to hold steady.

...

Rastenburg or wherever, you know, the Wolf's Lair.

Yeah.

And having the, the fuhrer spotlight is a, is a really, really bad thing because you can't just sort of hide stuff.

On October 18th, the Red Army crossed the border into East Prussia and entering the territory of the pre-1939 Reich for the first time.

They advanced 60 kilometers by October 21st, bringing them within 100 kilometers of Hitler's headquarters at the Wolf's Lair.

But Soviet casualties and equipment losses had been heavy.

The Germans launched a counterattack a few days later, spearheaded by Germany's latest tank, the Tiger II, known colloquially as the King Tiger tank, the heaviest and best armored tank in the German arsenal.

On November 18th, a specialist examined him and discovered a polyp on his vocal cord.

You may recall that happened once before, back in 1935.

Hitler left the Wolf's Lair on November 20th and traveled by train to Berlin to get it treated.

He would never return to the Wolf's Lair.

So she gets onto this train and sorta gets her bearings and realizes that she's right next to one of Hitler's bunker complexes.

This one is called the Wolf's Lair.

Oh, Lord, I know I should stay focused on this one singular story, but I can't.

I need to tell you about the Wolf's Lair.

Okay, so as discussed, Hitler liked to bebop around during the war on his super special spa train, and sometimes he used that as his headquarters, but other times he wanted something more permanent, and I get that.

I do not like to pee on trains.

So he had a lot of headquarters sorta scattered all over the place, and these were protected bunker-like facilities where he could fart and yell at people without being scared of bombs.

And a lot of them had names that had to do with wolves because Hitler's nickname was Wolf, you know, like Wolf's Canyon, Werewolf, Wolf's Lair.